Haiti’s unconventional new president shows off his moves

A video purpurting to show Haiti’s new president Michel 'Sweet Micky'
Martelly dancing in a bikini has been posted on YouTube.

12:00PM BST 06 Apr 2011

The shaven-headed performer, who has no previous political experience, was chosen as the anti-establishment outsider to put an end to the decades of corruption in the country.

Mr Martelly, 50, an iconoclastic entertainer who has admitted occasionally smoking crack cocaine in the 1980s, faces the huge challenge of trying to rebuild country in crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of people still live in squalid camps after last year’s earthquake, reconstruction has stalled and unemployment is running at 50 per cent.

Following his victory with 68 per cent of the vote, thousands of supporters danced in the streets and climbed on cars with reports of automatic rifles being fired into the sky.

Mr Martelly is the son of an oil company executive and attended college in the US. He has promised to counter Haiti’s dependency on international handouts and also wants to bring back the military, which was disbanded in 1995 after a history of coups and abuses.